The present invention relates to a data management technology and in particular to on-demand systems and methods for data management.
In present data management systems, data is typically stored on a database server and managed by data owners. Readers can demand data via a network connected to the database server. Readers download desired data from the database server via the network. For example, a data owner uploads a 1 GB (Gigabyte) file to a database. A reader browsing the file determines it contains desired data. If the desired data is in the file, conventionally, the entire 1 GB file will be sent to the reader, even though only a portion of the data is needed, such as 2 MB (Megabyte), requiring excessive network bandwidth.
Additionally, researchers and developers typically cooperate during research. Each researcher in a research group may only need a portion of a large file. If each researcher downloads the entire file, excessive network bandwidth use may cause serious overload issues and potential security leaks may occur. For example, IC (integrated circuit) layout research is typically carried out operated in cooperation mode. IC layout related files are usually large but each researcher generally requires only a portion of the data therein.
Thus, it is impractical to send every researcher the entire file. In addition, the IC layout file should be viewed and modified according to the different security rank and field of the researchers. A better data management solution is to send only the portions of a file desired by the readers.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,105,042 discloses a multi-user information management system adopted for efficient, remote, on-demand document management, storage and retrieval. The above US patent provides a system which dynamically transfers stored documents to match the characteristics of a user terminal and viewing options to avoid the transfer of a higher resolution document to lower resolution terminals. Therefore, U.S. Pat. No. 6,105,042 focuses on the transfer of different document formats and conditions, not suitable for resolving the mentioned data management problems.
Other on-demand data management systems focus mainly on multimedia data processing, such as on-demand video systems. Thus, the conventional and present data management method and system cannot resolve the mentioned problems.